Mercedes-Benz AMG–Powered Future Aston’s Won’t Feature AMG Badging

Jeff Jablansky

Feb 3, 2014

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When it comes to characterizing the automotive industry, we’re living in a truly global economy—an era in which some manufacturers proudly champion slogans like “Imported from Detroit,” while others quietly sneak in their foreign skunkworks projects under the guise of Americana. And then there’s Aston Martin, which inked a deal to purchase tuned engines from Mercedes-Benz’s AMG performance division for its next generation of V-8–powered sports cars. From any other company, such a move would have invoked Perfidious Albion. In this case, it was a delight for devotees of both brands, who probably spent the day waxing about the growl of a 5.5-liter V-8 with a supermodel’s body to match.

Now, according to Autocar, AMG will not advertise its involvement in the project through any explicit branding on Aston Martin’s cars, nor will it have any specific input on future products to come out of Gaydon—so don’t get your hopes up for a CLS-based Rapide S. An advanced degree in tasseography won’t help us guess what this means in terms of details, but it’s likely that future Aston Martins will adhere to a philosophy similar to AMG’s “one man, one engine” process.

We’re interested to see how the fruits of this labor develop, as the first AMG-powered Astons are still two or three years off. That should give marketers plenty of time to find a way to say as much as possible about the partnership, without saying much of anything at all.